


Metamorphoses: the ecdysis and transformations of Miss Rey Skywalker (a biography)

by CyanideBreathmint



Series: By A Death Star Dreaming [2]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 'fhalma uaaah reysma, Eldritch horror!Kylo Ren, F/F, F/M, Lovecraftiana pastiche, M/M, Multi, Other, Ren-tacles, Rey-vipositor, SAN Loss, behold the altar to my dumpster fire fixations, content warning: 1920s and 30s-era unethical medicine, content warning: Kylo Ren eats people, content warning: and rey, content warning: coercive surgical sterilization, content warning: debauched m/f/m anal oviposition tentacle threesome orgy, content warning: discussions of coerced psychosurgery (lobotomies), content warning: implied and explicit sexual content, content warning: racism, content warning: slightly traumatic eldritch menstruation, content warning: so does hux, content warning: surgical genital mutilation, daphne du maurier could power the eastern seaboard with her grave turning, eldritch horror!Hux, ia ia kylux, in dread dagobah cthulhu lies dreaming, really it's like a soul-drinking cannibal picnic out here, really this one is darker than the previous one, shagg h'gof'nn reylux, smutty fanfic for green energy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-20 04:30:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8236138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: It is 1926. Miss Rey Skywalker, niece of widowed heiress Mrs Leia Organa Solo, has been sponsored by her aunt into the best of Boston society, and trained carefully for her role. But disturbing rumors surround her mysterious origins and her adoption by her father, Dr. Luke Skywalker. As her body calls to a past she cannot remember, Rey finds herself drawing closer and closer to the awful truth that is her genesis. Her companion and chaperone Miss Aphra Phasma is loyal and loving, but can she teach Rey enough about herself to safeguard their minds and lives? Or will Rey have to seek another teacher - her presumed-dead cousin Ben Solo, debauchee, parricide and sorceror?





	1. Prologue (the gold silk gown)

**Author's Note:**

> This dumpster-fire fanfic is dedicated to the posters in the Star Wars ITP Discord chat. Long may your garbage reign.
> 
> \---
> 
> Ok. So the tags should have told you by now that this one is some heavy going. If you read the first fic and thought it was a bit dark, you might want to sit this one out. 
> 
> On the other hand, if you read The Vanishing and thought that it could contain more filth and body-horror? This one's all for you. 
> 
> As usual for me this will contain floridly purple prose, an attempt to pastiche the writing-style of the time and genre, and way too much detail about fiddly in-period things that nobody actually really cares about.

_The essential feature of metamorphosis is the sudden bursting into function of new organs, whether these organs suddenly arise or have been gradually formed, without becoming functional in preceding larval stages._ \- The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911.

\---

_Thursday, the 31st of December, 1925_  
New Year’s Eve

The orchestral music swelled to a loud, brassy crescendo behind Rey when she felt the strap of her left slipper give. She tried to keep her balance in mid-step and failed, leaned heavily on the “stag” she had been dancing with as she stumbled to a halt.

“Rey!” her masked partner cried. He gallantly lent her his arm as she bent to retrieve her shoe. “What is the matter? Have you hurt yourself?”

“Perhaps,” she told him, hearing the worry in his voice; “the strap on my slipper has broken, and I might have turned my ankle.” The other couples in the ballroom ignored her halt, moving past them in a neverending counterclockwise swirl as Rey paused briefly to remove her other shoe while her companion steadied her. Her right ankle hurt when she put her weight on it, and she could feel a droplet of moisture rolling down her cheek under the mother-of-pearl mask she had worn to the Lowells’ New Year’s Eve masquerade ball. Despite the pain Rey was fairly sure it was perspiration, not tears - she did not cry easily.

“Come,” Jim Lowell said, his face all concern under his Venetian mask, “I’ll help you to a chair, daughter of Poseidon.” Jim had studied at Harvard and was proud of his erudition, and he knew his Greek myth, even if his academic Greek itself was rather wobbly. She hadn’t had the heart to correct his pronunciation, however. Rey had danced with the very best of Boston’s young gentlemen tonight and Jim had been the only “stag” to identify the attributes of the circlet that she had worn in her hair tonight. 

A generous loan from her Aunt Leia, the tiara had come originally from the House of Cartier, a confection of gold, pearls and red Italian coral. Rey wore it pinned as a headband resting just above the dark Grecian knot chignon of her lustrous brown hair. Only married women wore tiaras in strictest propriety, and she was yet unmarried.

The coral had been left in its natural branching shape and adorned with hammered-gold leaves and pearls for berries. The resulting sprigs looked like pickings from King Midas’ garden set into a _corolla_ , the laurel wreath of a victorious athlete at Olympos. Leia had lent it to Rey after she had made a chance remark about the golden silk of her new ball gown shining like byssus. Thereafter there had been no questions or worries about her mask for the masquerade ball - she would go as a Nereid, masked in pearl. 

Her maid Peggy was already waiting for her by the time Jim brought her to one of the chairs placed near the ladies’ dressing room for the convenience of resting dancers. She took the slippers from Rey’s hand and turned the damaged one over to study the strap.

“I can sew this strap closed in a moment, Miss Rey, if you would like to continue dancing,” Peggy said at last. 

“Oh, no thank you, Peggy,” Rey sighed, as she tested her ankle in its silk stocking. The joint felt wobbly and loose as it began to swell. “Take whatever time you need. I believe I will take a few minutes’ rest.” 

“Of course, Miss.” Peggy turned away with Rey’s slippers in her hands and began to rummage in her capacious workbag. Her smooth brown hair was bobbed neatly and contained in a net adorned with a black velvet bow, and her swift careful fingers soon found the items required to perform a temporary repair to Rey’s shoe.

“Should I summon your aunt, Rey? My mother, perhaps? We can ring for a physician now, if you’d like,” Jim asked her quite seriously. 

“It is just a minor turn,” Rey demurred, “and besides, it is past eleven and I have been dancing since eight.” She put a smile on her face and silently thanked the mask for hiding the faint frown of pain on her brow. “It shall not be a great imposition for me to sit down and rest until midnight.” 

“As you wish,” Jim Lowell smiled briefly back at Rey as she smoothed the translucent silk of her overdress, watched the gold thread of her frock gleam warmly through it. The Murano glass beads edging her gown caught the light and winked as the handkerchief hem of the garment shifted with the movement. “Is there anything I can bring you from the refreshment table?”

Rey could feel her skin cooling as perspiration evaporated off her shoulders and the nape of her neck, considered asking Peggy to fetch her wrap once she was done with the shoes. “A cup of consommé if you please, Jim,” she sighed softly. “Thank you very much.” 

“I shall be just a moment,” he assured her, and then she was alone and watching the others dance as the song ended and the second orchestra struck up the next. Skirts bloomed into unlikely flowers as ladies twirled around the ballroom, turning the place into a strange, savage garden. A strange ringing sounded in her head, and it was almost as though she were underwater, the music replaced by a hollow bubbling in her ears. It was almost too easy to imagine this ballroom under the sea, each pair of dancers transmuted into seaweeds and jellyfish as their shadows shifted on the sand of the seafloor. 

For a few moments Rey fancied herself a mermaid, perhaps even the one in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, the feverish throb in her ankle analogous to the pain the mermaid had felt while dancing on her new human feet. 

Sometimes Rey would gaze around at her friends - Jim Lowell and Mariane Otis, twin brothers Matthew and Michael Baker, Celia Putnam and Sophia Gardner and associated hangers-on, all scions of the so-called Boston Brahmin families, and feel like a mermaid who had sprouted legs instead of a tail. It was true enough that her father Luke Skywalker was the son of an English baron, and her aunt Leia the adoptive daughter of the wealthy, dignified Organas, with their collective heritage of senators and philanthropists, magistrates and artists. 

Rey felt none of that grandeur and nobility internally, though. She was adopted, her father never having married, and she was well aware of the occasional whispers that attributed her existence to a youthful indiscretion or impropriety on Luke’s part. It wasn’t as though she was ungrateful for her aunt’s social sponsorship, or the careful training Leia had begun since Rey had turned fifteen, culminating in a year at a finishing school in Switzerland. 

It was simply that Rey felt like a fraud, be it in the the cynosure of the ballroom or the ski-slopes of Lausanne. It was as though she was waiting for someone from the foggy depths of her unknown past to rise up and announce her true, base nature, to separate her from the golden youths surrounding her and reveal her as merely gilded brass. It was perhaps that feeling that had made her identify so much with the mermaid of the fairy-tale, a creature neither here nor there, leading a half-life as a half-thing.

Then she remembered the ending of the story. The mermaid had been unable to kill the prince she had loved, who had forsaken her for another woman, and had died, lonely and heart-broken, and turned to sea-foam on the waves. The thought sent a faint shiver through her, and she blinked several times under her mask.

“I’m almost done, Miss Rey,” Peggy murmured to her under the music, breaking her reverie, and she let her maid kneel and place the damaged slipper on her foot so that she could secure the loose, damaged strap with several twists of strong thread. “I might as well help you with the other one,” she said a few moments later, “since I’m right here at your feet.” 

“Please do be careful, Peggy,” Rey said just loudly enough to be heard over the music, “my right ankle hurts a little.” 

“It’s swollen, Miss,” Peggy said quietly as she eased the slipper onto Rey’s right foot. “That strap might pinch you, it’s a bit tight now.” 

“That’s fine, Peggy,” Rey breathed, biting her lip against the hurt, “I need only stay here to midnight, and then I can make my excuses to Mr. and Mrs Lowell and call a taxi.” There was a sharp bite of pain, the strap of her undamaged shoe tightening on her puffy ankle, and then Peggy stood up to check her work. 

Satisfied, she put her embroidery scissors and her needle-book back into her workbag. “You’re almost shivering, Miss Rey,” Peggy said after a moment, “I’ll get your wrap from the cloakroom.”

“Thank you.” 

Jim brought the cup of consommé and pressed it into Rey’s hands just as his mother, Mrs. Lowell, bustled over to join the pair, Aunt Leia following closely, just a step behind. 

“I saw you leave the dance, dear,” Mrs. Lowell said, her expression all concern, “and I was sure you were limping, so I caught Jim at the refreshments table and asked him about you. Are you well, my dear? Shall I fetch a physician?” 

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Lowell,” Rey said, “but I do believe it is quite unnecessary.” She tried to rise from her seat as was polite when addressing her social superior, but her aunt Leia kept a firm hand on her shoulder to prevent her from rising. 

“No, no, stay seated, Rey,” Leia told her, and eventually both ladies took seats to either side of her to spare her ankle while they talked. The broth was strong and rich and as warming as it could be without the customary splash of sherry, and it comforted her to take small frequent sips from the spoon, as though that way the heat would pass straight into her bloodstream and warm her from within. 

Peggy returned with Rey’s wrap in her hands and draped the mink cape over her shoulders, settling it gently in place before she hooked the fastening in place. 

“Shall we go home early tonight?” Leia asked after Rey had finished half her cup of consommé. “I won’t mind if you need to.” 

Rey tested her ankle again under her aunt’s watchful eye, found the pain more distant now. “I think I can stand,” she said bravely. “Please take my cup for a moment, Peggy, thank you.” Rey closed her gloved hands into fists against the pain and rose in a single movement, steadying herself on her feet before she could wobble. 

There was a soft gasp behind her, and she turned to see four pairs of eyes fixed upon the chair she had just left - Jim’s green, Mrs. Lowell’s muddy hazel, Peggy’s gray-blue and her Aunt Leia’s dark and warm. She wondered dumbly why they were staring, and then found her own gaze catching, under her mother-of-pearl mask, on the seat of her chair. 

_Blood is red,_ Rey thought hard, as though wishing could make it a reality, _not black._ But there it was, the stain on the chair, dark and unreal and oddly symmetrical like the wings of a moth rendered in inkblot.

A strange slick wetness ran hotly down the insides of her thighs, and she only realized then that the back of her skirt was soaked. _This happens to every woman,_ she reminded herself, _this happens._ She could imagine the blood spilling into her skirts like murky sepia on golden byssus, clouding the clear waters of the Mediterranean sea. 

“Let’s fetch you home,” Aunt Leia said, kindly but firmly, and Rey could not find the breath with which to object.


	2. bloodworts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey dreams of a city named Carcosa, and thinks about its strangeness. A physician comes to examine her. She paints bloodworts, her father has disturbing news, and a figure thought gone will soon resurface in her life. 
> 
> \---
> 
> Content warning: medicine as corrective violence performed upon the other  
> Content warning: body horror  
> Content warning: discussions of non-consensual surgical sterilization  
> Content warning: discussions of non-consensual soul devouring fantasies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kangaroo paws are the flowers used in the set of Rey's hut inside the AT-AT she lives in - remember the shot of the flowers in the little cup? Those are the ones I have her painting here.
> 
> Apologies to Daphne du Maurier for my paraphrasing and theft of the first paragraph of _Rebecca_. She does not deserve this.

_When Earth, spread over with diluvian ooze,_  
_felt heat ethereal from the glowing sun,_  
_unnumbered species to the light she gave,_  
_and gave to being many an ancient form_  
\- Ovid's _Metamorphoses,_ trans. Brookes More, 1922

\---

_Entry from the personal diary of Miss Rey Skywalker._

_Friday, the 1st of January, 1926_

Last night I dreamt that I went to Carcosa again. It seemed to me that I stood on the quay by the lakeshore, and for a while I was completely alone, for the city was uninhabited. I called in my dreams to the boatmen, but as the stars came up, bright and sharp in the cold night air, I saw that the boats were unoccupied and merely drifted on the wind, bobbing gently on the alkaline waters of Lake Hali. 

I was not cold, for I was well wrapped-up, and for a few moments I watched the night-fish attracting prey with the phosphorus glow of their escae. Moths and other tiny creatures flitted low over the fuming lake, and were devoured instantly by the leaping fish, their mouths snap-snap-snapping as they breached the water in a frenzy of hunger. 

When I bored of watching the lake I turned and trudged alone through the city streets until I reached the gates. The gate-keeper’s lodge was lit, and I knocked curiously on the door, but no one came. An ornate brass key remained still in the lock, and I turned it to find the mechanism well-oiled, and the door swung open with barely a touch. 

Inside I found the remains of a fire in the fireplace with a kettle hanging before it on a fire-dog. I stirred the embers with a poker I found leaning against the wall, and laid fresh fuel upon them. The dry sticks crackled slightly as the tongues of flame took hold, and it was good to be inside, for I did not care very much for being out of doors alone in an uninhabited city.

\---

It wasn’t as though Rey had been some kind of ingenue, blind to the facts of life and the realities of bodily love. Luke Skywalker had educated his daughter with a certain kind of healthy indifference to shoulds and should-nots, choosing to base her education on her quick wit and malleable intelligence instead. He had taught her out of college textbooks, academic papers and encyclopedias, and as a young girl Rey had sat quietly to the side of his lectern in many of his lectures at Miskatonic University, listening and taking careful notes.

Luke had never closed his library to her, for he gave no heed to conventional wisdom concerning what a young lady should read. In his eye, all knowledge and understanding was suitable, provided the reader had the maturity, discretion and understanding to utilize it fully, and Rey had amused herself with _Gray’s Anatomy,_ Ovid’s _Amores_ and Cicero’s treatises alike. She now possessed an education excelling those of many young men, even those in her social set who had attended the best schools and the most prestigious universities in the world. 

No, it was only that Rey’s first menses were completely unexpected in the first place. Her father had told her, when she turned sixteen five years ago, that there was a chance that she might never conceive were she to marry. 

“A congenital malformation of the uterus,” he had said, his face sad and solemn as she had tried to take in the magnitude of the news. “I have known since you were very young. Perhaps I should have told you sooner, but I wanted your childhood to be an untroubled one.” 

Rey had not mourned her putative barrenness much at all, for at sixteen she had been rather a tom-boy. She had resolved never to marry, and to continue helping her father in his work and research for as long as he lived. It had only begun to hang like a millstone about her neck in the past two years, after some of the girls in her social set had married. It was only then that she realized how much of Society revolved around the ceremonies of marriage and christening, and how she would be a constant bystander as her friends paired up two by two. It was perhaps that she had not been mature enough, at sixteen, to realize what would be denied her for the rest of her life.

Rey did not think that her late menarche indicated a change in her condition. It was at present something she had thought of as more of a nuisance. She had let Peggy go to bed once she had arrived home last night, as was typical during ball nights, but her dear friend and companion Aphra Phasma had been sitting up, and she had sewn her a temporary napkin belt while she had taken a hot bath. 

The stained silk dress went to soak in a tub of cold, slightly soapy water, awaiting Peggy’s careful attentions. The gown was far too delicate to survive the typical beating and wringing at the hands of a laundry-woman, and Rey could only hope that the fine drawn gold spun into the silk threads of the weave would make the fabric more resistant to staining. She had only worn this gown once, and she did not like the thought of it ruined and unwearable so soon.

The belt went around her waist and fastened with hooks and eyes. Aphra had given Rey a gauze envelope from her own Kotex box and shown her how to pin the long ends of the envelope onto the belt with a pair of safety pins so as to hold the padding securely between her legs. 

Aphra had reassured Rey just before bed last night, after she had laid a wool-covered hot water bottle over Rey’s belly. “It probably only looked black in the light of the ballroom, my dear,” she had said. “Besides, my own monthly courses have occasionally been quite dark. I’m sure you are well, but I’ll ring Dr. Tarkin tomorrow and ask him to look you over after he treats your sore ankle, just in case.”

Now Dr. Tarkin was here, and Rey shivered slightly as she turned aside the warm cocoon of her quilt and sheets. The night had been a bitter one, and more snow had fallen outside to cover the somnolent trees and the empty gardens with a fresh blanket of white. 

Aphra had come upstairs with the doctor, and she drew the room’s muslin and linen curtains for privacy just as Dr. Tarkin shut the door behind him. 

“A good morning to you, Miss Skywalker,” Dr. Tarkin said, his voice warm and familiar, “Miss Phasma told me that you had hurt your ankle last night?” 

“Yes,” Rey said. She sat up in bed and turned to rest her feet on the floor. Her right ankle was still very sore, but some of the swelling had gone down overnight. There was a blackish ring of bruises where the strap of her shoe had bitten into her flesh, and a matching mark just under the prominence of the lateral malleolus. 

“Well,” Dr. Tarkin murmured, as he dropped to one knee to take her foot in his hands, “let me see how bad this sprain is, and take care of that, and then we can proceed with the rest of this call.” His fingers were cool and steady against the inflamed heat of the sprain, and Rey set her face bravely as he began to manipulate the joint slowly and carefully, testing its stability and range of movement.

\---

_Excerpt of a report from the desk of Dr. W. R. Tarkin, Jr. dated Friday, 1st. Jan. 1926_

TO: The Montauk Island Research Oversight Committee

Concerning Subject R. 

Gentlemen, 

I pen this report in order to inform you of a matter which may alarm you. Subject R. was reported to have attained menarche last night, roughly around 11:30 PM Boston time. 

I was summoned to the S. household this morning to treat Subject R. for an ankle sprain taken whilst dancing last night, and was requested also to examine her due to “the unsettling darkness of her first blood”, and I shall summarize my findings herein. 

Externally Subject R. continues to resemble a healthy young woman, presently of twenty to twenty-one years of age. Thelarche seems to have progressed normally, with Subject R’s breast tissue being modestly formed, but ultimately within the usual bounds of human endowment. Skin texture and pigmentation are normal, contrasted to that of Subject M, without the accompanying deformities and disfigurations therein. Pubarche has also occurred, and when questioned Subject R. indicated that the growth of pubic hair had begun at age 14, which is not so delayed in a typical human female. 

However - and this is the most alarming discovery of all - the fact remains that Subject R. should not have reached menarche at all, given the early hysterectomy performed 1905, before Subject R. was released to the custody of L.S. 

An analysis of Subject R’s. menstrual discharge reveals a darkness that is altogether unnatural - not even old, coagulated blood remains this black even after dilution. The discharge is slippery and thick, rather analogous in texture to frogspawn, and it contains no iron at all, as would blood. Its purpose is unknown, and the secretion could be either an error of anatomy given Subject R’s hybrid ancestry, or perhaps some kind of discharge signalling fertility instead. 

Manual examination and palpation reveals that the vaginal tract is no longer hypoplastic as was before (ref. 1917 examination performed under cover of appendectomy) and that Subject R’s internal reproductive organs may have regrown, contrary to all examples of human development, in the intervening decade. Ovaries or analogous tissue are now palpable beneath the abdominal muscles. Digital stimulation of the anterior vaginal wall provokes the partial eversion of an organ unknown to all human anatomy, it being roughly analogous in appearance to the hemipenes of a snake. 

Subject R. remains _virgo intacta_ , but she remains unaware of her true nature. She has been presented as an eligible young lady within her social circles, which leaves the possibility that she might wed and therefore be fertilized by a human partner. 

I therefore suggest Subject R. undergo exploratory surgery, and her reproductive tissues be excised during the procedure lest she - and I do not say this lightly - spawns monsters upon us.

\---

Rey sat up in bed and buttoned her nightgown back up, feeling oddly ashamed and fragile in the moment. It wasn’t as though Dr. Tarkin had ever been anything but kind and professional in her presence. He had been a familiar face through most of her remembered childhood. Rey remembered the time she had broken her arm falling out of an apple-tree, aged eight, and how he had soothed her wailing and set the fracture as gently as he could.

The old cook Mrs. Kosak had later retrieved the purloined green apples from the pockets of Rey’s dress and baked apple dumplings for dessert that night, and Rey had learned to use her silverware one-handed while her right arm remained encased in plaster. Father had insisted Dr. Tarkin stay for dinner, and they had spent a long time talking in his office afterwards. 

This time felt different, though, and Rey knew why, could sense it at the edges of her consciousness. This was the first time Dr. Tarkin had seen her, post-menarche. She was now a maiden in all senses of the word. It wasn’t as though she was unchaperoned, however. Dear Aphra Phasma had remained in the room through the entire examination, holding her hand as she had answered Dr. Tarkin’s questions about her symptoms. Rey knew that Dr. Tarkin had seen many people undressed in the course of his career, and that it was a professional, detached thing with him, and there was nothing untoward about his gaze or manner.

Surely Aphra would have commented if anything had been wrong, and there was no-one more respectable than a sensible English companion. The pale morning light shone thinly through the closed drapes in Rey’s room, and for a moment she wanted to get out of bed and pull them open, to expose everything to the light of day. Aphra’s hair shone like platinum in the winter sun, and the snow and wind seemed to suit her fair complexion better than any other season of the year. Instead, Rey settled back in bed and let her companion take care of her.

“I hope all is well, Dr. Tarkin,” Rey said in a low voice after Aphra had tucked the sheets and blanket back over her legs and lap. “I did not think the blood would be so … black.” Now she waited for Dr. Tarkin to speak after he rinsed his hands in the washbasin placed for his convenience. 

“Oh, that?” Dr. Tarkin asked, his expression affable, avuncular as he dried his hands on a small hand towel. “A woman’s menses can vary in color and texture, and a certain amount of variation is quite natural. Now, Miss Phasma, if you’ll remember these instructions.”

“Of course, Doctor,” Aphra said as she sat back down in the comfortable armchair at Rey’s beside, where she had been all morning. Her omnipresent knitting hung in a little drawstring bag dangling off the knob of Rey’s chest of drawers, and she picked a small notebook and pen up from its top. 

“Make sure Miss Skywalker eats and drinks well,” he said as he packed his instruments back into his black doctor’s bag. “Supplement her diet with more meat if she begins to feel weak or faint. She needn’t stay in bed as long as her ankle doesn’t hurt her too much - light to moderate exercise will be helpful in avoiding neurasthenia.”

Rey felt a spike of irritation echo the leaden, heavy ache in her lower belly and her bound-up right ankle. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t capable of understanding those simple instructions, and it bothered her to be spoken about as though she weren’t there. But then Aphra laid a cool, gentle hand on Rey’s brow and smoothed her loose hair back, and she closed her eyes to the world. _Calm,_ the gesture said, _I know the problem._

“Is there anything else I need to do, Dr. Tarkin?” Aphra asked, her voice every so slightly icier with each passing syllable. Rey forced herself to relax into her mattress as she cupped her hands over her belly and tried to ignore the cramping. She thought of the city in her dreams, the faint glow of strange fish in even stranger waters, and felt the tension leach out of her shoulders and the back of her neck. 

“No,” Dr. Tarkin said, “but I do wish to speak with her father.” 

Carcosa. Like a name out of a fairytale. She had been dreaming of the city, building it in her head, for as long as she could remember. She still had some of the old drawings she had made of its fantastical tower, its architectural follies. She remembered Cousin Ben and how he had indulged her childish ways, thought of how he had opened an old astronomy textbook and guided her through its contents. He had drawn her a simple model of planets orbiting a pair of binary stars, and labelled each one with the names she had heard in her dreams. 

That had been before the Great War, before Ben had gone so bravely and seriously to the trenches and before he had come back forever changed. Now he was dead, or presumed so after having slain his father in a fit of madness two years ago, and Aunt Leia had only recently put aside the whites, grays and mauves of half-mourning in favor of color, albeit in graver, paler hues. 

“Professor Skywalker is in his study as is usual for this time of the day,” Rey heard Aphra say, and yes, there was a definite note of disdain in her dulcet English voice. The hand left her brow and reached for her hand, squeezed gently, and Rey returned the gesture without opening her eyes. 

“Very well,” Dr. Tarkin said. “Don’t hesitate to ring me again if you think anything else might be wrong with Miss Rey.”

Rey listened for the shutting door before she opened her eyes again. Outside her bedroom Dr. Tarkin’s footsteps creaked down the hallway as he headed for the staircase. 

“Oh, the old windbag,” Rey hissed once she was sure he was downstairs, “why is he talking about me now like I’m some kind of object instead of a person? Is it because of this?” she asked, gesturing briefly to her lower belly, the juncture of her thighs. The pad was uncomfortably warm against her skin, its moisture tacky, and she hoped that she hadn’t gotten blood all over her nightgown. How did Aphra deal with something this unpleasant every month? She hadn’t the faintest idea.

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t pleasant to hear,” Aphra sighed. “Would you like to get out of bed now, at least? Peggy’s still asleep, but I can help you dress and do your hair.” 

“I’m afraid to move, Aphra,” Rey said as she leaned experimentally forward in bed, noted optimistically that the cramping did not increase in intensity. “I’m terrified of staining all the furniture in the house, and ruining all my frocks. Maybe Father should just build a small hut where I can go into seclusion every month.” 

“And then I’d have to bring you your meals in a pot on the end of a very long stick, as ignorant savages do,” Aphra laughed, “and rinse it in water before bringing it back into the house. No, Rey, you shall be fine. I can order you some rubber-gusseted sanitary bloomers to wear, if you’re concerned about staining your clothes.” 

“Oh, Aphra,” Rey sighed, “I’m so glad you’re my friend. I’m not sure what I’d do if we had engaged a prune-faced old Puritan lady as my chaperone instead. She’d probably tell me I was suffering the curse of Eve and if I hadn’t wanted to deal with this mess and nuisance I shouldn’t have been born a woman in the first place.”

“And I am so glad you’re my friend, dear Rey,” Aphra murmured as she brushed a lock of hair off Rey’s cheek. “I could have been engaged by a cold, unfriendly household with charges who dislike and resent me. I’ll just spread a clean towel down on your favorite chair so you won’t have to worry about staining it, and you can have a nice bath and change your sanitary napkin. I’ll find you a pretty gown to wear, and we’ll have Mrs. Rogers send your luncheon upstairs.” 

Mrs. Rogers was the colored cook who had replaced Mrs. Kosak after she had retired and gone to live with a married daughter. She had worked in the Skywalker household five years, and Rey considered herself quite fortunate that her apple dumplings were every bit as delicious as her predecessor’s. The thought of Mrs. Rogers’ cooking made Rey’s appetite awaken, and an audible growl issued forth from her stomach as she realized that she had not had breakfast today. 

“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Rey said at last, after the last grumblings of her empty belly faded away for the moment. “Thank you so very much, Aphra.”

\---

_Entry from the diary and grimoire of Miss Aphra Phasma_

_December 30th, 1925_

Rey is beginning to ripen into full womanhood, and her powers will soon follow. She does not yet suspect what is happening to her, and I can only comfort her and try to ease her into the truth.

I have lived with the Skywalkers for the past three years, and I can only say that I have come to love Rey more dearly than I would my own sister. I sense no artifice in her warm and genuine personality, and I might be a fool for saying so, but I do not believe that her innate kindness is a lure constructed by her other side in order to ensnare potential victims. No, I want to believe that she is authentic and loving just as she is. 

Her nascent hungers trouble me. She will become a danger to herself and to others, and to allow her to go unfed will only lead to disaster. And yet I doubt that she would willingly feed on the soul of an unwilling or unknowing victim, and besides, I do not think I could lure another being into such an end. 

There _must_ be a solution to my problem, and I feel as though I have my hand upon it, though I know not its form.

\---

There was a soft creak in the hallway, a sound that Rey recognized as the loose board halfway up the staircase giving ever so slightly under her father’s step. She rinsed her sable-hair brush carefully in her water-bowl and then laid it gently down on the surface of her desk, careful not to disturb the porcelain palette in which she had mixed her paints.

She watched the fine, cockled cotton-rag paper drink in the moisture as the pigments dried upon it, stood up carefully, and then turned from her half-finished painting and the arrangement of dried “kangaroo paw” blossoms just as her father knocked politely on the open door of her bedroom.

“Rey, please sit back down,” Luke Skywalker said without ceremony. “I need to speak to you.” 

“Of course,” she said. She glanced briefly at the bow of his shoulders, the set of his mouth in his beard, and turned her chair to face him, before seating herself again at her desk. He shut the door to her room clumsily, sat down in the armchair Aphra Phasma usually occupied, and sighed heavily, and everything about that expression said _trouble,_ to Rey.

“Those flowers,” he murmured, his glance catching on the stalks framed in the open window, “What are they?” 

“They’re _Anigozanthos_ ,” Rey said quietly, “family _Haemodoraceae_ , the bloodworts. They’re an Australian flower commonly called ‘kangaroo paws.’ These were grown in Mrs. Robert Putnam’s hot-house, and Celia brought some for me to study.” She kept the tone of her voice light, but she noticed how her father’s gaze had left the flowers already and settled upon her. “Was there something you needed to tell me, Father?” she asked him. 

Luke sagged minutely in the armchair, as though suddenly aware of the burden he carried. He blinked, several times and then massaged his right forearm through the sleeve of his jacket as though it pained him. It did often enough, Rey knew, as she glanced quietly at the empty cuff of his shirt, pinned neatly closed with a safety pin. She did not know how he had lost the hand, only that he had lost it in the time before she had entered his household. 

“Rey, my dear,” he said after another awkward beat of silence, “I know this is going to be inconvenient, but I need you to go to Arkham to stay with your Aunt Leia for a while. Miss Phasma has already been informed, and she’s working to cancel your appointments for the next few weeks.” 

“But Alderaan House isn’t open for the season,” Rey protested, “and Aunt Leia isn’t due to return to Arkham until May.” She could not imagine why her father was doing this, at all. It wasn’t the thought of cancelling all her social engagements for the month that was distressing her. No, it was something in the way he would not return her gaze.

“Rey,” Luke sighed, “As we speak your Aunt Leia is packing up and ringing the servants at Alderaan House as a very special favor to me. Peggy is going to help you pack your things, and then you must go. Your aunt is going to come to pick you up herself in her motor-car, and Miss Phasma will come along with you.” Now _this_ was alarming. The only time Rey had remembered her aunt Leia cutting the social season so short was when her uncle Han had died, and when Cousin Ben had vanished. 

“But why?” Rey continued to ask her father. “What’s wrong?” 

She thought of the way Tarkin had looked at her - as though he had not wanted to admit her humanity - thought to the bitter ashen smell of the blood collecting in the sanitary napkin between her thighs, and began to shake. “Is there something wrong with me?” Rey felt a strange unreal panic start to grow in the pit of her belly, competing with her cramps to distress and nauseate her. 

_“No!”_ Luke told her, his voice almost rising to a shout, and she flinched briefly as he got out of his chair and took her firmly by the right shoulder. “Rey, my dear girl - I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you much right now, but I want you to know that I love you, and that I shall always love you. I have several obligations to fulfil here in Boston, and then I shall be joining you at Alderaan House in a few weeks.” He let go of her shoulder and reached up with his left hand to brush a strand of loose hair out of her eyelashes. 

Rey nodded woodenly then, registering the fear and guilt that lay beneath her father’s solidity and authority. 

“I’ll tell you everything then, I promise,” Luke told her. 

“I love you, Father,” she whispered into his ear as he enfolded her into a brief embrace, suddenly afraid she would never get a chance to say it if she didn’t, now. 

“I know, my dear,” he rumbled softly as he patted her on the back just a little stiffly, “I know.”

Luke Skywalker left the room, and Rey only allowed herself to weep once she had heard the creak of his foot on the stairs. Her falling tears smudged the fresh paint on the watercolor paper, and left the petals of the flowers mottled and pale. The unfinished painting remained on her desk with her brushes and paints, untouched for decades, waiting in vain for her return.

\---

_Entry from the journal of Kylo Ren, undated._

There has been an awakening. Do you sense it? 

Not even Grandmother does, but I bear a different complement of sense organs and have been ever conscious of tremors in the aether, some of which would properly require a dowsing-ritual to perceive. I have been scrying for hours in a basin of water, but I am presently too far away from the Waking Lands to pinpoint where this disturbance may have originated from. 

I may actually have to leave the safety of Leng to explore the possibilities of this occurrence, which I confess thrills me somewhat. Dreams are sufficient nourishment for one such as I, but I do so miss the promise of life and its savor. 

Besides, my darling love has never eaten anyone before. He has subsisted for the past nineteen months on the thin gruel of figments as I have, and while he seems content enough, it is not mere contentment that will satisfy me. I want to see the flush of passion in his pale face, the burning desire in his eyes as he finds someone, the Right One in the streets of the perfect city, and hisses his choice to me. 

I want to hold him as he strains and trembles against his new and temporary lover and whisper to him as he drinks them down to the very last drop. And then, perhaps, we will rut in the dust, like the beasts we are, monsters delighting in our very aberrant hungers. 

Perhaps it _is_ time to return to the lands of men.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my dear readers wondering about the feasibility of a surgical intervention as early as 1905, the first successful hysterectomy (via abdominal access to the peritoneum) was performed by Dr. Walter Burnham in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1853. Dr. Ernst Wertheim performed the first radical abdominal hysterectomy in 1898, with a 19% mortality rate in his first 500 patients. What Dr. Tarkin describes might probably have killed the subject when performed at such an early age had she not also been a human/eldritch abomination hybrid with, as demonstrated within this chapter, enhanced healing and regeneration capabilities.
> 
> Also, I do not apologize for Kylo Ren's journal entry AT ALL. Not one bit. Not even the callback to the movie.


End file.
